While childhood vaccination rates are well over 90%, adults are far more likely to be behind on vaccinations http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/national_adult_immunization_plan_final.pdf Think you're up to date on your vaccinations? You might be surprised at how many vaccinations are now recommended for American adults -- and the federal government plans to start tracking which of those vaccines you're behind on. The Department of Health and Human Services released its preliminary draft of a new five year plan to increase adult vaccinations this month. The newly revised 52-page National Adult Immunization Plan says: While the NVP provides a vision for improving protection from vaccine-preventable...

Roberta and Curtis Campbell typically look forward to tax time. Most years, they receive a refund – a little extra cash to pay off credit card bills. But this year the California couple got a shock: According to their tax preparer, they owe the IRS more than $6,000. That’s the money the Campbells received from the federal government last year to make their Obamacare health coverage more affordable. Roberta, unemployed when she signed up for the plan, got a job halfway through the year and Curtis found full-time work. The couple’s total yearly income became too high to qualify for...

The Supreme Court this June could cut off millions of Americans from affordable Obamacare coverage. The response from the nation’s governors gathering in Washington this week was an assortment of shrugs. POLITICO interviewed more than a dozen governors, from both parties, this weekend at the National Governors Association winter meeting. Most said they’re in a wait-and-see zone. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week, the decision is likely in late June and no one can foretell how the court will rule on its second major case that could strike at the heart of the president’s signature health law. For...

With all of the new bad news coming out this week from ObamaCare, here’s another horror story about the Healthcare.gov exchange from Utah that exemplifies the incompetence of government bureaucracy. One basic and nearly ubiquitous feature of health care — and indeed of family life — is the birth of children. Health insurance plans have made it simple to add children to family plans for decades, allowing new moms and dads to have the costs of childbirth covered ex post facto, as long as the covered individual notified the insurer within a set period of time, usually 30 days. Now,...

The frigid winter has gotten even colder for Barack Obama. President “selfie-stick” just got a snapshot of his troubled Affordable Care Act and it’s starting to resemble an unaffordable debacle. The latest snafu: Some 800,000 Americans who got their plans on the technologically toxic Healthcare.gov were given incorrect tax forms and will need to “amend” their filings. Don’t worry though, the correct forms are coming ... in March! Bad news if you’ve already spent your refund. By the way, you’re going to need that refund because anemic enrollment means fewer dollars in the pool and that means premiums will go...

If you want a sense of just how far-reaching the impact of a Supreme Court decision gutting Obamacare subsidies could prove, new data on health care signups released this week provide a fresh way to game out such a ruling’s consequences. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the other day that some 11.4 million people have signed up for health plans through federal marketplaces. The new HHS data also provides a breakdown of the number of sign-ups in each of the three dozen states on the federal exchange — precisely the states that would no longer get subsidies...

Almost half of uninsured adults are unaware that there is a financial penalty for lacking health insurance, according to a study released Thursday by the Urban Institute. The study, using data from December, found that roughly 25 percent of uninsured people above the poverty line had heard “nothing at all” about the penalty, and around 20 percent had heard “only a little.” Fifty-three percent had heard some or a lot. Under ObamaCare, people without health insurance who do not qualify for an exemption must pay a penalty. For those lacking coverage in 2014, the penalty is $95 or 1 percent...

The administration sent incorrect tax information to 800,000 people who have enrolled in ObamaCare, the administration announced Friday. Because of the mistake, tax credits were calculated either too high or too low, and officials are asking people to delay filing their taxes until the problem is corrected. Affected people are now being contacted by phone and email. The administration said that 50,000 of the people affected had already filed their taxes, and the government would now work with them to correct the problem. The error involves the "benchmark" health plan that is used as part of the formula for calculating...

Phony Numbers: The Obama administration says more than 11 million signed up for ObamaCare this year. Should anyone believe this number? Even if it's true, is it a sign of success? The answer to both is a resounding no.

As President Obama fights in Congress and the courts to preserve the nation's sweeping healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act faces still another threat to its viability: Republicans in statehouses, many bucking governors of their own party eager to accept its flow of federal dollars.When a group of Republican governors filed suit to overturn Obama's signature achievement, Wyoming's Matt Mead was among them, arguing the legislation was a vast overreach that violated the Constitution and trampled the right of states to set their own policies.But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that argument, Mead decided it would be foolhardy to...

One thing I have often pointed out about the Affordable Care Act (ACA alias Obamacare) is that very few doctors participated in the conceptualization of the legislation. The final bill focuses on expanding Americans’ access to health insurance with a total disregard for increasing the supply of medical professionals or facilities for treatment. Some doctors are directing their efforts to educating their patients and the voting public of what they believe the bill is doing to harm patient care.To better learn the effects upon doctors and thus their patients of this new law, I had a conference call with a...

Liberal comedian Bill Maher, a longtime champion of Obamacare, began to change his tune on President Obama’s signature legislation Friday night. “Obamacare: You know it’s the signature achievement of obviously this president and like many liberals I’ve been screaming how great it has been and ‘it’s working’ and ‘there’s no doubt,’” Maher said on his HBO show “Real Time.” “But The New York Times on Sunday did an article that basically said, you know, when Obama said if you like your plan nothing will change — well, everything has changed,” Maher said. “46 percent of people are having trouble paying...

Janice Riddle got a nasty surprise when she filled out her tax return this year. The Los Angeles resident had applied for Obamacare in late 2013, when she was unemployed. She qualified for a hefty subsidy of $470 a month, leaving her with a monthly premium of $1 for the cheapest plan available. Riddle landed a job in early 2014 at a life insurance agency, but since her new employer didn't offer health benefits, she kept her Obamacare plan. However, she didn't update her income ... Now, she has to pay back the entire subsidy, which is forcing her to...

Obese People Could Have Benefits Taken Away If They Refuse Treatment David Cameron says taxpayers should no longer “fund the benefits” of obese people or drug and alcohol addicts who refuse to accept the treatment that could help them get back into employment By Peter Dominiczak, 13 Feb 2015 Obese people could have their benefits stripped if they refuse treatment in a bid to ensure they can lead a “fulfilling life”, David Cameron has said. A Conservative government will attempt to ensure that tens of thousands of people who claim welfare on the grounds of obesity, drug or alcohol addiction...

<p>Students at vaunted Cornell University are plenty smart enough to know they should not have to pay a penalty for not buying the school's health insurance if they already have coverage, but that's exactly what a new policy at the Ivy League school requires.</p>

“Obamacare’s shoddy implementation doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its great evil,” reported Breitbart late last year, referring to the healthcare rationing that is insidiously hidden within the pages of the evasive law. Perhaps the most alarming criterion of healthcare rationing found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the plan’s death panel language.Democrats vehemently denied that death panels would play a role in the ACA, but the law itself states that doctors will be paid to have discussions with patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life options.Killing patients whose perceived utility is declining is not exclusively...

As much as I hate these people, on some level I’m starting to feel sorry for them. They remind me of Communists in the Gulags who still think Stalin cares about them. Or abuse victims who keep defending their abuser. The latest comes from the New York Times.

Crony Socialism: Among ObamaCare's many bad ideas was the attempt to create an entirely new industry of nonprofit insurance co-ops. It is fast turning into a huge, multibillion-dollar taxpayer boondoggle.

Employer mandates and penalties exist only in states with ACA subsidies, which are only available through state-based exchanges. Most individuals will also be exempt from the mandate and penalties because there's no "affordable" (subsidized) coverage.

The health insurance market is changing. And the changes are not good. Even before there was Obamacare, most insurers most of the time had perverse incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. But now that the Affordable Care Act has completely changed the nature of the market, the perverse incentives are worse than ever. Writing in Sunday’s New York Times Elizabeth Rosenthal gives these examples: *When Karen Pineman of Manhattan sought treatment for a broken ankle, her insurer told her that the nearest in-network doctor was in Stamford, Connecticut – in another state. *Alison Chavez, a California breast...

**SNIP** Given that the authors of Obamacare had a very specific idea in mind for what constitutes affordable insurance, the American Health Policy Institute is out with a new study that asks a very interesting question: Does Obamacare meet its own standards for affordability? The answer is no. Here are a couple of the key findings from AHPI's study: Even now, under the Affordable Care Act’s own definition, over 105 million Americans will find plans in the ACA’s [Affordable Care Act's] public exchanges to be “unaffordable” when both premiums and deductibles are taken into account. Over 13 million employees with...

First lady Michelle Obama believes Americans can keep the federal government from meddling with their lives by eating healthy foods and maintaining an active lifestyle. In an interview with Cooking Light magazine published Monday, Mrs. Obama said the best way to avoid dealing with “the system” is to take care of one’s own body. Doing so, she said, will eliminate trips to the doctor and the need to deal with Obamacare. “It’s just making sure people understand that the most powerful thing that they can do for their overall health is feed their bodies good nutritious food,” the first lady...

ISIS murdered a Jordanian pilot today. They torched Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive in a cage.Barack Obama responded to the horrific murder by pushing Obamacare. â€śShould, in fact, this video be authentic, itâ€™s just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization. And I think weâ€™ll redouble the vigilance and determination of the a global coalition to make sure they are degraded and ultimately defeated. And it also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology theyâ€™re operating off of is bankrupt. Weâ€™re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better. And...

When it became obvious a couple of years ago that Obamacare would accelerate health care inflation, the law’s boosters began claiming that cost control was never its primary goal. PPACA’s promoters had previously promised that it would reduce annual health care expenses by $2,500 per family while improving access and quality of care. But the facts forced them to abandon that pledge and adopt a safer party line. As expressed by the New York Times, the new story goes thus: “At its most basic level, the Affordable Care Act was intended to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.”...

I did my Income Taxes online last night. I got a surprise near the end. The tax program, I've used for years would not let me complete the process until I answered "Government Required" questions re: my family's health care. It began with: "Due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act......" It seemed to indicate that if one does not have Health Coverage, it could hold up your Tax Return. That's your Government at work "for you"!

Along with the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate has been one of the more controversial aspects of Obamacare. Implementation of the employer mandate has been delayed twice, and other aspects of the law are being phased in, with "transitional relief" to help businesses cope. However, according to Healthcare.gov, an employer "mandate" doesn't even exist. A search for "employer mandate" on Healthcare.gov doesn't return any applicable information, but there is a page on the site entitled "Which businesses must cover their employees." The answer begins with the unequivocal statement, "No employer is required to offer health insurance to...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected.

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

Health Reform: The Congressional Budget Office now says ObamaCare will push 10 million off employer-based coverage, a tenfold increase from its initial projection. The "keep your plan" lie just gets bigger and bigger.

Remember the issue in Halbig? Thereâ€™s a section in the ObamaCare statute that says federal subsidies to pay premiums are available to anyone who buys their insurance through â€śan Exchange established by the State.â€ť But that phrase is vaguely worded. Is the federal ObamaCare exchange, Healthcare.gov, an exchange established by the state? Or was the idea that subsidies should apply only to exchanges created by the individual states, as an economic incentive to encourage state governments to create their own insurance marketplaces? You know what Jonathan Gruber thinks, or thought, about that. By this summer, weâ€™ll know what John...

Senate Republicans are preparing a legislative plan of action in case the Supreme Court strikes a major blow against ObamaCare and rules subsidies provided to people on the federal exchange are illegal. GOP senators are confident the justices will rule in their favor, and they want to be ready to act if millions of people lose their subsidies to buy insurance through the healthcare law. “If the Supreme Court were to say the law says what the law says, we would like to be ready with a response to that that makes practical sense for the 5 or 6 million...

Next year, doctors and hospitals will no longer get paid according to the fee for services model. They will get a fixed salary according to how well patients do. We will see the equivalent of patient report cards. Personalized care is out, government one-size fits all healthcare is in. The more tests, scans, surgeries that hospitals and doctors do, the less they will make. What could possibly go wrong? It will have a devastating effect on patients’ access to care. Patients who come back for the same problem will be included in the one-time bulk rate. Beginning next year, Medicare,...

The Obama administration on Monday announced an ambitious goal to overhaul the way doctors are paid, tying their fees more closely to the quality of care rather than the quantity. Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018. Monday’s announcement marks the administration’s biggest effort yet to shape how doctors are compensated across the health-care system. As the country's largest payer of health-care services, Medicare influences...

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence is moving ahead to extend Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers under the federal health law after securing a key concession from the Obama administration. The deal, to be announced Tuesday, could pave the way for half a dozen more states to seek similar deals, boosting Medicaid expansion proposals in Republican-led states including Florida, North Carolina and Wyoming. Indiana and Washington officials had been locked for months in negotiations over an issue that could shape the future of Medicaid, the 50-year-old federal-state health program that covers more than 60 million low-income Americans. Mr....

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday. The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook. The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect. Pulling...

Federal deficits may have been falling since the end of the recent recession, but thanks to spending increases in major health care programs, including Obamacare, deficits are set to explode in 2017, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. Thanks to the recent recession and President Obama's trillion dollar stimulus, the federal budget deficit reached an all time $1.4 trillion high in 2009. Then, as the economy slowly improved and Obama's stimulus trickled to end, the deficit began to fall. According to the CBO, the deficit will continue to fall to $467 billion in 2016. Immediately...

(Newser) Seniors had better brace themselves: Some US hospitals are now administering the "death test," which estimates their chance of dying over the next 30 days. Invented in Australia, the test weighs 29 different criteriaâ€”including blood pressure, respiratory rate, and medical historyâ€”to determine whether hospitalization is worthwhile or the patient should return home or go to a hospice, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The idea is to prevent needless and expensive procedures while allowing patients to spend their last days with loved ones. "Most terminally ill people want to die at home, but in fact three quarters end up dying...

Vice President Joe Biden wrapped up his California visit on Friday by telling doctors that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, had “ended the debate” about whether health care is a privilege or a right, according to the Orange County Register. Biden was speaking to the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit, congratulating doctors on a rapid reduction in the rate of hospital-borne infections in recent years. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also spoke to the meeting. There is no provision in the Constitution or in the text of the Obamacare bill that refers to health care as a...

Some Buffalo Wild Wings customers are noticing an extra charge on their bill that up until now has not been seen in the Panhandle. The Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants in both Amarillo and Lubbock recently attempted to pass their employee health insurance costs on to their customers by adding an Affordable Care Act surcharge. The two percent surcharge started appearing on bills January 1--the same day businesses with 100 or more employees were mandated to provide insurance to at least 70 percent of their full-time employees. The Howard Restaurant Group who owns the Buffalo Wild Wings said it implemented the...

This might come as a shock; you had better sit down. An internal review released on Friday revealed that the federal government did not properly vet the contactors it hired to develop the web portal that would service customers shopping on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchange. Of course, disastrous debut of HealthCare.gov led every rational person to reach this same conclusion months ago, but it’s now official. “One of the reports showed that CGI Federal, a key contractor in the development of the site, had ties to failed projects, while an earlier story revealed that the company...

Privacy advocates say the Obama administration needs to make more changes to protect consumer privacy on the government’s health insurance website. The administration reversed course Friday and scaled back the release of personal information from HealthCare.gov, after The Associated Press reported that such details as consumers’ income and tobacco use were going to private companies with a commercial interest in the data.The episode could become a blemish on what’s otherwise shaping up as a successful open enrollment season for the second year of expanded coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Lawmakers continue to insist on a full explanation....

Staff of the Washington Health Benefits Exchange, which manages the state’s Wahealthplanfinder health-insurance exchange, told its board today that it had significantly improved the processing of account invoices and payments to insurance carriers. Richard Onizuka, CEO of the exchange told board members that of the accounts processed in December, those with carrier-payment problems were down to 1.7 percent, and those with invoicing problems were 1.5 percent. “We are seeing some improvement,” Onizuka said. “It still means that too many people are being affected.” “It seems enormously high to me,” new board member Mark Stensager said. “And it’s a trend that...

Paying Your Fair Share:: By: Larry Walker II ::In Tax Simplification, Part II, I expounded on a 2010 Annual Report to Congress, in which National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson focused on the need for tax reform as the No. 1 priority in tax administration. In particular, she focused on the problem of delivering social benefits through the tax system, which complicates the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in a dual mission of welfare administration as well as revenue collection. But instead of taking heed, the federal government doubled down, adding a new health care excise tax...

WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers are facing rising pressure from conservative groups and activists to go big – or potentially go home – in their fight against ObamaCare. After taking control of Congress thanks to big victories in the November midterms, Republicans who ran in part on their opposition to the law are starting to roll out legislation undoing pieces of it. But the party is stuck in an internal debate over how far they can really go – risking a potential backlash from the party’s right flank if they don’t go far enough. Tea Party activists say they are frustrated...

Healthcare.gov, the federal website where you sign up for Obamacare, is quietly sharing your personal information with private companies. The evidence is in the computer code on the website itself. It shows that Healthcare.gov is relaying certain information, such as your zip code, income level, pregnancy status and whether or not you smoke. That information is being shared with several third parties. DoubleClick is a Google (GOOG) subsidiary that serves up advertisements and tracks your movements online. Healthcare.gov also shares your data with Google, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30), YouTube and others. "People's private medical data should not be...

And we all know that the debt is one of the three most important factors of The State Of The Union. Obama spoke of all of these wonderful things he wants to do over the next few years, mainly free stuff! Yet he never mentioned the overwhelming debt that will eventually collapse the system by 2016. He never brought up the success of his health-care plan. Never mentioned that thanks to him, every household has access to affordable health-care and every household is Saving $2500.00 a year !!

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's health insurance website is quietly sending consumers' personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data for performance and marketing, The Associated Press has learned. The scope of what is disclosed or how it might be used was not immediately clear, but it can include age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. It can include a computer's Internet address, which can identify a person's name or address when combined with other information collected by sophisticated online marketing or advertising firms. The Obama administration says...